Miss Rachel's Reading Resources

Rationale: Now that your students are fluent readers you must teach them how to comprehend what they are reading. One way to tell if a student comprehends his reading is if he can summarize what it is that he’s read. Summarizing shows students the importance of using a graphic organizer- to only focus on the material of the story that is useful to learning.

Materials: Pencils and paper, highlighters, white board, dry erase marker, sheet of blank paper for summarizing rules, sheet of lined paper for summarizing articles, copies of the Highlights magazine (one per student, one for teacher) containing the article Sailing to San Blas, overhead camera

Procedures:

1. Say: Who’s ready to learn how to summarize an article? Summarizing is a way for us to understand what we reading after reading it. To summarize, we will narrow the read material down to only the important parts. I have found an article that I find very interesting and that will be good to practice this on. Let’s look for the most important idea and the phrases that support it in this article so we can get the rest of it out of the way.

2.  Say: Now that everyone has a piece of paper we will begin going over the rules. Write on your paper the rules that I am writing on the board. These rules will help you summarize as you read the article. 

3. Say: Rule one is to get rid of the sentences and words that repeat themselves. Rule two is to not put too much focus on events and dates. Rule 3 is to come up with a sentence of what you think the writer of the article wants you to really get from this.

4.  Say: The main idea should be supported by certain phrases that help you recognize it. (At the bottom of the students’ rule page they will write down some key points to remember in regards to summarizing. For instance, summaries should always be shorter in length than the information you are summarizing.)

5.  Say: Let’s take out our Highlights magazine and turn to Sailing to San Blas. (book-talk) This article is about an American family learning about the Kuna Indians. These Kuna people live on the San Blas islands which stretch along Panama. Do you think the Kuna Indians are different from your family? Do you think the American family gets along with the Kuna Indians? Get with your usual reading partner and take turns reading paragraphs, remember to read in your inside voice…First, let’s help each other find the phrases that aren’t very important to our main idea. Everything from “Put on your life jackets!” to “…check the radar and watch the depth meter” is not really useful to us even though it prepares the scene. Let's all take our pencil and cross that sentence out. Next, we need to highlight and locate important pieces of information in the text. For example, when it says, “We are sailing toward the San Blas archipelago, a chain of more than 360 islands in the Caribbean Sea, stretching along the coast of Panama in Central America,” we need to highlight the name of the islands and the name of the sea. Now, for the topic sentence. We know that the article is about a different culture on an island…so we might say, “The family that visited the San Blas islands has much to tell of their venture.” After we cross out everything that isn’t important to us, we can use our topic sentence and the information that we have left to write our summary. On your own paper, write the topic sentence and the rest of the information that we have left in your own words.” Walk around the room and scaffold until the students understand completely.

6.  Say: “After you’ve crossed out everything that doesn’t matter, written your topic sentence, and thought about what else you want to say in the summary I want you to start writing the summary paragraph. At the bottom of your article, write five new words you have never seen before you read this article and write their definitions-in your own words (what you think they mean based on the context within the article).” Scaffold this again but give the students space to figure out how to do this.

 Assessment: Students will be assessed at the end on how well they did on their summaries. I will use this scoring rubric to grade their summaries for the correct information: Did the student in his or her summary…?

• Begin by crossing out insignificant material? 

• Organize like items and events together?

• Decide on the topic/theme of the article and provide a sentence that covers this?

• Select supporting details of the main topic/theme? 

• List 5 new vocabulary words and their definitions (in students’ own words)?

     I will also ask the students a series of comprehension questions to see if they read and understood the article:

• What sea are the San Blas islands located in?

• What is the dugout canoe called that Hayley mentions?

• Describe what you think the Kuna villages and houses look like.

• What are some of the things mentioned in the article that the Kuna people eat?

• What is the coconut used for besides eating?

Resources:

http://www.childrensbookacademy.com/mondays-with-mandy-or-mira/nonfiction-articles-for-kids

http://www.highlightskids.com/audio-story/sailing-san-blas

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